The Sametime Blog

I almost forgot to report on my panel at VoiceCon but better late than never.

So, the two positions were more or less as follows:

Voxeo's environment allows you to create voice applications really quickly using scripting languages. The application mashes up data from one or more sources and it presents a voice interface to the user. Dan York showed a telephone-call interface for an application that gives you the weather for a given ZIP code and nothing else.

The Sametime platform provides a general-purpose environment that acts as the context for whatever data and voice you may want to mash up at a given time. I showed the Sametime Meetings client and Sametime Unified Telephony working in tandem to build an ad-hoc aggregation of data and voice from various sources. We provide APIs for you to extend the general-purpose environment to fit your needs. You may even include one of Voxeo's applications in it if you want to.

The reaction to the two approaches was positive. There was one person, however, who said to me he didn't "see it" as clearly as he did when Dan built the weather application on the fly. I explained the difference and even Dan agreed that the Sametime approach to building voice mashups is based on providing context first and that functionality is implemented as attributes while the Voxeo approach is based on building functionality first while leaving the context to the user.

There were analysts in the audience and, strangely, they left as soon as we were both done with our presentations. I found it strange that they didn't stay for the questions-and-answers bit of the session. Overall it was a good session, good interaction and a good audience. I would do it again any time.

Just got back from a hectic few days connecting with customers and partners, press and analysts in the Unified Communications market. Bruce Morse, IBM VP of Unified Communications and collaboration software delivered a keynote address. The IBM showfloor booth was very busy. We showcased Sametime 8.5 and Sametime Unified Telephony as well as the other Lotus collaborative products. A big hit at this show was the long line for the IBM candy store looking for a 'Sweet Tweet'. Here are few pictures from the show.

As we approach the end of the year, I receive many recommendation requests for tools that can help manage Sametime license compliance. One such tool is the Permessa IM License Auditor.

"In a few quick steps, Permessa IM License Auditor produces fast,
accurate counts of the Lotus Sametime users across an entire enterprise
or for selected servers. You'll know true accurate license counts for
known users, active users and more. The report also displays counts by
client application and version number for detailed license tracking.
The result is that you can be ready for a license audit or true-up with
three simple steps."

As an added bonus, Permessa provides the Auditor under a "free 45-day license with unlimited renewals"... so it's essentially free. Try it and let us know how useful you find it.

I know I promised some photos from VoiceCon San Francisco 2009, but I've been traveling to Singapore and am just getting around to catching up on a few things before the US Thanksgiving holidays.

First of all a big thank you to the VoiceCon team, especially Fred Knight, who as always rolls out the red carpet for us. I have to say, from my vantage point in the IBM Booth staffing the Sametime demoes, the traffic was good and the quality of attendees even better than I would have hoped with the continuing slowness in the US and California economy.

And as you know, this was also the first time VoiceCon was co-located with Enterprise 2.0 San Francisco. It was a recognition that collaboration is spanning both real-time and social collaboration, and that Enterprises need to consider both within a broader collaboration agenda. IBM was a key sponsor for both events.

In addition to our usual booth, keynote and other speakers, one of the neat things we did this time was set up a "Sweet Tweets" bar at the IBM Booth. Visitors were encouraged to stop by, pick up some sweets, and then tweet (#sweettweets or #IBM and #voicecon) about the IBM booth. Behind the bar was a large display showing a real-time feed of the twitter stream. My favorites were the gummy bananas - almost like banana-flavored Peeps. Here's a picture from my iPhone:Here's a few more photos:It was pretty much impossible to maintain a healthy eating habit with all this delicious stuff around:

IBM sells its own virtual meeting tool, Sametime 3D, which allows
businesses to share ideas and collaborate in a 3D world, and the
company is currently testing a more advanced version of the product.

[Rashik] Parmar
[IBM CTO, Northeast Europe] told CNN that he recently held a meeting with 12 technical leaders from
across Europe and Asia. While that would typically involve flying
everyone to a central location, he said the meeting was held using the
new Sametime 3D.

"Not only did we save travel time, but because the environment was so engaging, a lot more ideas came through," he said.

Not everyone of course will want a full virtual world environment for realtime collaboration, but it's good to know the option it there, and the business value tangible, for those situations that warrant a richer visual environment than traditional online meetings or rich text / audio / video chat. And it further shows the power of Sametime as a collaborative platform.

In communication circles, collaboration is apparently the word of the day. But for IBM customers, collaboration has long been an integral part of their UC environment. If you'd like to understand how IBM Unified Communications and Collaboration Solutions can help your business, I invite you to visit the new IBM UC2 Website and download a copy of the white paper, "The Power of Unifying Communications and Collaboration." You'll also find useful demos, webcasts, podcasts, 3rd party analysis and the new UCC Business Value Builder, which helps you quantify the value of UC2.

If you're not familiar with Greenhouse, it's a live community where you can use Lotus Collaboration products for free. And now it features the first public beta of Sametime 8.5 Online Meetings. You've seen the tweets from members of the private beta... and now you can see what all the buzz is about!

"Sametime 8.5 Meetings are an entirely new way to collaborate with others online. They are incredibly easy to use. Fully integrated into the Connect client you already use for chat, they make it simple to join a meeting with a single click; invite others by dragging their names from the contact list; upload materials via drag and drop; even share your screen from the Macintosh operating system. Of course, not everyone can participate via a Sametime Connect client, so 8.5 includes a zero-download, firewall friendly browser client as well.

Sametime Meetings are different. Meeting rooms are reservationless and don't need to be scheduled. They can be instantly created and linked to calendar invitations from Lotus Notes and Microsoft Outlook. Sametime Meeting Rooms can also be persistent. You can use the same room over and over for regular meetings and keep frequently used materials on hand during the course of the project...."

Greenhouse will be updated with additional capabilities that are part of the 8.5 release over the next month or so. Come on over and tell us what you think!

The IBM Support team is hosting a Webcast on Sametime Advanced installation, deployment and troubleshooting on November 12th at 10am Eastern.

"This Webcast presentation will consist of a brief overview of
installation, deployment, and troubleshooting of the Lotus Sametime
Advanced Server and its clients. Our goal is to explain and highlight
the details of the various steps of product installation, deployment,
and troubleshooting. The presentation will bring the attendee through a
basic introduction of Sametime Advanced, Sametime client requirements,
installation, and culminate with troubleshooting."

Sametime Advanced continues to be a hot seller, so there should be a lot of interest in this session.To learn more, visit this link.